Amazon announces textbook rentals for the Kindle platform

July 18, 2011 | 9:31 am

Amazon just issued a press release announcing the opening of their Kindle Textbooks store. Titles will be available to rent for periods from 30 days to 360 days, and students can increase the rental period in increments as small as one day, or purchase (license) the book outright at any point. The other compelling feature is that any notes or highlights will remain stored on Amazon’s servers under the customer’s Kindle account, just like other notes and highlights, so that they’ll remain accessible even after the rental expires.

Check out www.amazon.com/kindletextbooks for details. By the way, I find it interesting that the home page for the store doesn’t show an actual Kindle device, which so far hasn’t gained much traction at the university level.